How to create a HQ VCD?

[h3170ra]

Hi

I've tried to make VCD using Canopus procoder, but I'm not satisfied with the result. First I thought that the best result that I can get. Then I watched the original VCD that made by other people, the quality is almost same as DVD. Do I have to use the 3rd party encoder program? Or is there any solution from Canopus?

Best regards,

[shueardm]

I think it was always widely know (by forum members) that VCD quality from ProCoder wasn't great.

[THoff]

VCD is just not a very high-quality format to begin with, and it will never compare to a Full D1 DVD. Both the spatial resolution and the bitrate are just too low for that.

However, I just did a test with PC3 and rendered one of my projects to VCD format using the "Mastering Quality" settings, and I was actually pleasantly surprised, it didn't look bad at all. You can't blow the image up without it looking soft, but at the original size it looks crisp and free of macroblocking.

How you view the results has alot to do with how you interpret the results. If your media player scales or isn't set up right, you'll be disappointed. If you actually burn a disk and play it on a VCD (or compatible) player, expect VHS-like quality.

[jaegersing]

Hi

I've tried to make VCD using Canopus procoder, but I'm not satisfied with the result. First I thought that the best result that I can get. Then I watched the original VCD that made by other people, the quality is almost same as DVD. Do I have to use the 3rd party encoder program? Or is there any solution from Canopus?

Best regards,

Procoder VCDs are pretty good, except where the source has a lot of fine details. e.g. water ripples or tree leaves. This is just a limitation of the MPEG1 bitrate used in the VCD standard. Professional VCDs will probably use some preprocessing to limit the video bandwidth before encoding to MPEG.

[Timo]

Procoder is awesome for VCD and SVCD.
Prefiltering can be done by Avisynth, then open the Avisynth-script in Procoder to encode the VCD or SVCD.
In my opinion no other software-encoder can beat Procoder2/3 in that low bitrates that VCD and SVCD are limited in.

For footage like water ripples and so on decrease the edgedetails just a little bit ( not really visible, the difference can be a pure measurement difference ) but the encoded result will become significant better.

[h3170ra]

Could you tell me the detail how to do the prefiltering using Avisynth?

Thank a lot.

[THoff]

If you want to do this in Procoder itself, click on the Advanced button after selecting the source video, then click on Video Filter, and add the Blur, Circular Blur, or Gaussian Blur filter. Any of these will reduce the amount of detail in the image and allow for better compression.